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I am proud to tell you that EFF has just launched Privacy Badger 2.0! Our free browser tool helps hundreds of thousands of Internet users block third-party scripts and cookies that track you across the web. We hope you enjoy our latest round of improvements and join EFF to fight for technology that respects our rights.

Privacy Badger 2.0 is part of a growing number of EFF technology projects designed to protect your online freedom. EFF created HTTPS Everywhere to help ensure that you can connect to websites securely. We helped develop Let’s Encrypt, the free SSL certificate authority expanding the availability of encryption and taking the web by storm. We maintain Certbot, popular client software that eases the deployment of Let’s Encrypt certificates. EFF works on the side of ordinary users and advanced developers alike because together, we can build a safer, more privacy-friendly web.

You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your privacy to data miners in order to browse the web. Privacy Badger is here to help. Donate to EFF and strengthen these effective, practical solutions to protect privacy and help widen the path to a better digital future.

Fighting for your online rights,

Cooper Quintin
EFF Privacy Badger Developer & Staff Technologist

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
progress. -- Joseph JoubertAttachment 1008

The Fights Behind Us, the Fights to Come: 2016 in Review
The digital rights landscape shifted dramatically in 2016. From the very first week, when EFF confirmed that T-Mobile was throttling customers’ video streams, to our year-end call to the tech community to protect users in the face of the incoming Trump administration, 2016 saw no shortage of threats to Internet users’ fundamental rights to privacy, free speech, and the freedom to access information online around the world.

In 2017, we are likely to see new efforts to ratchet up surveillance using increasingly sophisticated tools, attempts to silence dissent and expression, and attacks on the rights of users and innovators. Defending digital civil liberties is as essential as it's ever been, and our movement has never been as strong as it is now.

EFF UpdatesEFF Ad in Wired: Tech Community Must Secure Networks Against Trump Administration
In a full-page advertisement in Wired magazine, EFF published an open letter calling on technologists to secure computer networks against overreaches by the upcoming Trump administration and to protect a free, secure, and open Internet. The letter outlines four major ways the technology community can help: using encryption for every user transaction; practicing routine deletion of data logs; revealing publicly any government request to improperly monitor users or censor speech; and joining the fight for user rights in court, in Congress, and beyond.

Whistleblowers Don’t Need Elite Credentials To Help Protect Us from Government Overreach
Author Malcolm Gladwell recently name-checked EFF in an article published in The New Yorker explaining what he sees as the differences between whistle-blowers Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg and concluding that Snowden doesn’t deserve the respect (or apparently the same legal protection) that Ellsberg does. As an organization that has extensive experience with trying to make change with whistleblower information, we sharply disagree with Mr. Gladwell’s conclusion, and even more so with how he gets there.

USTR Gets Piracy Website Listing Notoriously Wrong
The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has just released another edition of its periodic Notorious Markets List, a spotlight on websites and physical markets that it claims facilitate copyright or trademark infringement. This year, the focus is on stream ripping sites that take the audio from a YouTube video and makes it available for you to download—which is, in many cases, a legitimate and lawful activity. Also in the firing line are several cyberlocker sites, intermediary domain registrars, and online libraries Bookfi and Library Genesis.

Stupid Patent of the Month: Carrying Trays on a Cart
December’s Stupid Patent of the Month was especially relevant as people traveled home for the holidays: advertising trays for security screening, a patent so broad it covers almost any system of using trays and carts at a checkpoint. The owner of this patent, SecurityPoint Holdings, Inc., has sued the United States government for infringement and recently won a trial on validity. Together with Public Knowledge, we recently filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to consider the obviousness standard in patent law.

miniLinksNew York Times: Cyberwar for SaleThe New York Times Magazine looks at the rise of private contractors selling hacking tools to governments. The article is based on leaked documents from a surveillance software maker showing just how dangerous and profitable the industry is.

Op-Ed: Why Trump must Save the Government's Privacy BoardAn op-ed in POLITICO argues that incoming President Trump should save the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the five-member panel that is set to dwindle down to one member, leaving it without the ability to conduct its oversight of the U.S. intelligence community.

In most issues of EFFector, we give an overview of all the work we’re doing at EFF. Today, we’re doing a deep dive into a single issue: EFF's efforts to encrypt the web and our new video with Baratunde Thurston.

We're on a mission to encrypt the web. So we teamed up with the folks over at Sandwich Video and comedian and social critic Baratunde Thurston to spread the word about how you can use our tools to help.

Sandwich is the production company behind some of the best product launch videos in tech, and you may know Baratunde from his New York Times bestseller How To Be Black, or his work on The Daily Show and The Onion. We brought these creative forces together and made a video to show you why we need to continue moving from the non-secure HTTP to the more secure HTTPS and how you--with EFF tech tools HTTPS Everywhere and Certbot--can help us get there.

The web is in the middle of a massive change from HTTP to HTTPS. All web servers use one of these two protocols to get web pages from the server to your browser. HTTP has serious problems that make it vulnerable to eavesdropping and content hijacking. HTTPS fixes most of these problems. As Baratunde says in the video, “That ‘S’ makes all the difference. It’s for secure.”

For too long, website owners chose to implement HTTPS only for a small number of pages, like those that accepted passwords or credit card numbers. However, in recent years, the Internet security community has come to realize that all web pages need protection.

That’s why we and other like-minded organizations have been pushing for the use of HTTPS across the web. We’ve been calling on all website owners to implement HTTPS by default, and we’re providing the tools to do it.

One tool is HTTPS Everywhere, our browser extension that redirects users to HTTPS sites wherever possible. Many sites partially support HTTPS by making HTTPS available but sending visitors to the non-secure HTTP site by default. HTTPS Everywhere fixes that by redirecting requests to these sites to HTTPS when it’s available, automatically activating encryption and HTTPS protection that might otherwise slip through the cracks.

Our second tool is Certbot, which helps website operators set up encryption for their sites in a convenient and free way. Using a series of easy-to-follow interactive instructions, Certbot can automatically fetch custom certificates for your domain. It can also automatically configure your webserver to support encrypted traffic and even be set to renew that certificate whenever it’s close to expiring so that you never have to worry about it again.

In the video, Baratunde goes through our goal of encrypting the entire web and the reasons to use HTTPS Everywhere and Certbot. Watch and share the video, and start protecting yourself online today.

The United States has entered a new era. Donald Trump has sworn the oath of office, pledging to uphold the Constitution. But as EFF has learned in the course of defending our fundamental rights over four American presidencies, our civil liberties need an independent defense force.

The first 100 days will set the tone for the rest of Mr. Trump’s time in office. The transition team has laid out what they hope to accomplish over this period. Some of the things he and his team said have us preparing for the worst. Based on statements about surveillance, net neutrality, and press freedom, we anticipate attempts to undercut many of the hard-won protections for technology users and thwart efforts to reform broken laws.

So we’ve set out how we will fight for your rights over those first 100 Days, including continuing to defend digital rights in court, testing and leveraging the Freedom of Information Act, and holding Silicon Valley accountable.

Copyright law not only impacts the music you hear or the movies you watch, it shapes your ability to communicate with others online, to create, post or share content to online platforms, to make art that talks back to popular culture, and to use, fix, and tinker with your own belongings. When copyright law is out of balance–when content holders are given too much power to control how new technologies and copyrighted works are used–it limits our basic freedoms to access information, to express ourselves, to control our own digital devices, and to innovate to create new tools and creative works.

Five years ago this week, a diverse coalition of Internet users, non-profit groups, and Internet companies defeated the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), bills that would have forced Internet companies to blacklist and block websites accused of hosting copyright infringing content. In the five years since SOPA, new threats have emerged. We continue to fight alongside our allies to push back against proposals that would expand copyright’s reach and trample on the public interest and push for a better copyright law that serves everyone, not just established copyright industries.

As part of that work, each year we join together with a diverse range of organizations to advocate for a set of principles for making copyright law work for everyone, including defending the public domain, protecting the right to tinker, and transparency and representation in the copyright policy setting process.

As one of his very last acts in office, President Obama has commuted the sentence of whistleblower Chelsea Manning by 28 years. EFF applauds Obama for using his last days as president to bring justice to Manning’s case. And we congratulate all those who supported, defended, and spoke out on behalf of Manning over the years and supported her clemency petition. Your efforts secured her freedom.

EFF is asking a court to overturn a ruling that could cripple online platforms that host and aggregate user reviews. In a brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, EFF argues that a lower court got it wrong when it ruled that ConsumerAffairs.com could be held liable for reviews written by the site’s users—despite the fact that platforms like ConsumerAffairs.com have broad protections when they aggregate or otherwise edit users’ content. If the decision is allowed to stand, EFF’s brief argues, then platforms may take steps to further censor or otherwise restrict user content out of fear of being held liable.

The Republic of Kazakhstan’s legal harassment of independent newspaper Respublika and other fierce critics of the ruling regime has finally come to an end. Kazakhstan employed the deeply flawed U.S. hacking statute called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to mount a two-year campaign of harassment, censorship, and retaliation against the publication in courts around the world. The clock ran out on Kazakhstan’s lawsuit and the government finally dismissed it, but not before real damage was done to the free speech rights of the newspaper, which was forced to shut down, and other parties.

In order to make remix videos, do computer research, or make e-books accessible, people often need to bypass access controls on the media they own. In a brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, EFF argues that the government cannot prohibit such speech without running afoul of the First Amendment. The case centers around VidAngel, a service that allows customers to view movies minus the parts it identifies as offensive. We filed to ensure the court understands the impact on speech of an anti-circumvention law that does not include flexible accommodations like a fair use exemption.

Following President Trump’s confusing executive order on terrorism and immigration, there have been reports that border agents at airports were searching the cell phones of passengers arriving from the Middle East, including U.S. permanent residents. We’re concerned that this indicates an expansion of the already invasive digital practices of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, so we’re asking for your digital border search stories.

Searching through Americans’ social media data and personal devices intrudes upon both First and Fourth Amendment rights. As part of our work to combat what we believe to be unconstitutional practices at the border, and to better understand how the Trump Administration’s new policies may be changing border practices, we would like to hear your stories.

Please let us know if a U.S. official at the border examined your cell phone, laptop, or other digital device; asked for your device’s passcode or ordered you to unlock or decrypt it; or asked for your social media handles. We would like to hear from everyone, but especially if you are a citizen or permanent resident (green card holder) of the United States.

Can foreign governments spy on Americans in America with impunity? That was the question in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last week, when EFF and others went to court in Kidane v. Ethiopia.

Despite the numerous issues on appeal, the argument focused on whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction to hear a case brought by an American citizen for wiretapping and invasion of his privacy that occurred in his living room in suburban Maryland. As we've argued, the question of whether U.S. courts can provide a remedy to an American who was wiretapped shouldn't turn on where the eavesdropper was sitting, but rather where the actual wiretapping occurred.

Ethiopia's lawyer took the position that the country should be able to do anything to Americans in America, even set off a car bomb, as long as Ethiopia didn’t have a human agent in the United States. One judge asked what would happen if Ethiopia mailed a letter bomb into the United States to assassinate an opponent, or hacked an American's self-driving car, causing it to crash. Ethiopia didn't hesitate: their counsel said that they could not be sued for any of those.

The Supreme Court already has a list of digital civil liberties issues to consider in the near future, and that list is likely to grow. If confirmed, President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court—Judge Neil Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit—will be in a position to make crucial decisions affecting our basic rights to privacy, free expression, and innovation.

On the privacy front, the Supreme Court is being asked to consider a pair of cases dealing with law enforcement obtaining cell phone location records: the U.S. v. Graham ruling out of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. v. Carpenter out of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. On free speech, the court is set to hear arguments on Packingham vs. North Carolina and consider the constitutionality of a North Carolina law that bans registered sex offenders from using online social media platforms that minors also access.

When it comes to intellectual property issues, the court has agreed to hear arguments in a case centered around where patent infringement lawsuits can be brought and arguments in a case about whether a patent holder can put limits on how a customer can use, resell, tinker with, or analyze a patented product a customer has purchased. The court is also being asked to hear arguments in cases that consider how copyright holders should be held accountable for unreasonable infringement claims and whether the Patent Office's appeals board uses the correct standard when determining obviousness of issued patents.EFF Updates

The last year has seen enormous progress in encrypting the web. Two categories in particular have made extraordinary strides: news sites—including Wired, BuzzFeed, The New York Times, and The Guardian—and U.S. government sites.The common thread between the news industry’s huge progress and the federal government’s huge progress in deploying HTTPS? Metrics. Reports like like EFF’s 2013 Encrypt the Web Report, the General Service Administration's Pulse, and Freedom of the Press Foundation's Secure the News provide important insight into how much progress is being made and an incentive for individual sites to improve.

The California Senate recently moved forward with two new state bills that would create a database firewall between California and the federal government. One, S.B. 54, would prevent law enforcement agencies in California from sharing department databases or private information with the federal government for immigration enforcement and would require state agencies to update their confidentiality polices so that they stop collecting or sharing unnecessary data about every Californian. Another, S.B. 31, would prevent local and state government agencies from collecting data, sharing data, or using resources to participate in any program that would create a registry of people based on their religion, ethnicity, or national origin.

The Copyright Office, and those who lead it, should serve the public as a whole, not just major media and entertainment companies. In comments to the leadership of the House Judiciary Committee this week, we told Congress that if it restructures the Copyright Office, it has to put in safeguards against the agency becoming nothing more than a cheerleader for large corporate copyright holders.

Everyone should be able to read the law, discuss it, and share it with others, without having to pay a toll or sign a contract. Unfortunately, a federal district court has recently said otherwise, ruling that private organizations can use copyright to control access to huge portions of our state and federal laws. In its ruling, the court ordered Public.Resource.Org—which posts public documents, including regulations created through private standards organizations and later made into law—to stop providing public access to these key legal rules.

The Copyright Alert System has called it quits, but questions remain about what, if anything, will replace the private agreement between several large Internet service providers (ISPs) and big media and entertainment companies. That agreement allowed the media and entertainment companies to monitor those ISPs' subscribers' peer-to-peer network traffic for potential copyright infringement, and imposed penalties on subscribers accused of infringing. EFF had serious concerns with the program from the start, and we welcome its retirement. But we’re not celebrating just yet.

EFF recently received dozens of pages of documents in response to a FOIA request we submitted about Operation Choke Point, a Department of Justice project to pressure banks and financial institutions into cutting off service to certain businesses. While Operation Choke Point was purportedly aimed at shutting down fraudulent online payday loan companies, we became concerned that this campaign could also affect legal online businesses. Unfortunately, the response from the Department of Justice leaves many questions unanswered.

Issue 714 continued in next post

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
progress. -- Joseph JoubertAttachment 1008

A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over users' emails stored in servers located abroad in compliance with search warrants, despite the fact that a federal court said last year that Microsoft did not have to turn over data stored abroad, Reuters reports.

Records of your online activity reveal a tremendous amount about you. That's why the FCC put in place critical broadband privacy protection rules late last year to protect your right to privacy online. Now, some members of Congress are looking to completely erase those rules and let your Internet service provider sell information about what you look at, what your purchase, and who you talk to online.

If that weren't enough, the method Congress would use -- passing a Congressional Review Act resolution -- would effectively permanently ban the FCC from ever writing new privacy rules. Because of the current legal landscape, the Federal Trade Commission is already barred from policing Internet service providers. So if Congress repeals the rules, there will be no federal cop on the beat for Internet privacy, and your sensitive Internet activity could be sold to the highest bidder.

The movement to encrypt the web has reached a milestone. As of earlier this month, approximately half of Internet traffic is now protected by HTTPS. In other words, we are halfway to a web safer from the eavesdropping, content hijacking, cookie stealing, and censorship that HTTPS can protect against.

Mozilla recently reported that the average volume of encrypted web traffic on Firefox now surpasses the average unencrypted volume. Google Chrome’s figures on HTTPS usage are consistent with that finding, showing that over 50% of of all pages loaded are protected by HTTPS across different operating systems.

Our goal is a universally encrypted web. Until then, we have more work to do. Protect your own browsing and websites with tools like HTTPS Everywhere and Certbot, and spread the word to your friends, family, and colleagues to do the same. Together, we can encrypt the entire web.

A new bipartisan report from U.S. lawmakers showcases troubling details about police abuse of cell-site simulators and calls on Congress to pass laws ensuring that this powerful technology is only deployed with a court-issued probable cause warrant.

EFF has long opposed law enforcement’s use of cell-site simulators as incompatible with the protections of the Fourth Amendment because they indiscriminately gather information on countless innocent people who have the misfortune of being in the vicinity of a suspect target. They also disproportionately burden minority communities.

Unless and until cellular technology evolves beyond the vulnerability that makes cell-site simulators possible, we’re advocating for strong regulation, transparency, and public oversight of the use of such technology by law enforcement. Accordingly, we applaud the report from Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Elijah Cummings, which provides new information to the public about these shadowy tools and recommends important privacy safeguards.

This week Sen. Wyden sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly announcing plans to introduce legislation that would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before searching the data on digital devices at the border. We have been arguing for a while that the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant based on probable cause for border searches of cell phones, laptops, and other mobile devices, and we applaud Wyden for trying to “guarantee that the Fourth Amendment is respected at the border.”

The “notice-and-takedown” process for addressing online copyright infringement isn’t perfect: it’s often abused to remove lawful speech from the Internet. But it many cases this process works pretty well, particularly because of the safe harbors that protect Internet services that comply with the law. EFF submitted comments to the Copyright Office this week arguing that safe harbors help protect the Internet as a viable and accessible platform for free expression and innovation, ensuring that online platforms are encouraged to experiment with new forms of communication and connection without threat of costly legal action.

A federal court in Seattle recently allowed Microsoft to move ahead with its challenge to the law that lets courts impose indefinite gag orders on Internet companies when they receive requests for customer data. It’s an important ruling, with implications for a range of government secrecy provisions, including national security letters. Unfortunately, the court also dismissed Microsoft’s Fourth Amendment claim on behalf of its users.San Diego Police Targeted African American Children for Unlawful DNA Collection

Police in San Diego, California unlawfully stopped a group of African American children and collected their DNA to add to the department's DNA database, according to a lawsuit filed recently by the ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties on behalf of one of the families affected. The police department's actions, as alleged in the complaint, illustrate the severe and very real threats to privacy, civil liberties, and civil rights presented by granting law enforcement access to our DNA.

A group of Mexican nutrition policy makers and public health workers have been the latest targets of government malware attacks. According to The New York Times, several public health advocates were targeted by spyware developed by NSO Group, a surveillance software company that sells its products exclusively to governments. The targets were all vocal proponents of Mexico’s 2014 soda tax—a regulation that the soda industry saw as a threat to its commercial interests in Mexico.

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
progress. -- Joseph JoubertAttachment 1008

Increasingly frequent and invasive searches at the U.S. border have raised questions for those of us who want to protect the private data on our computers, phones, and other digital devices. In response, EFF has released a guide to give travelers the facts they need in order to prepare for border crossings while protecting their digital information.

“Digital Privacy at the U.S. Border” helps everyone do a risk assessment, evaluating personal factors like immigration status, travel history, and the sensitivity of the data you are carrying. Assessing your risk factors helps you choose a path to proactively protect yourself, which might mean leaving some devices at home, moving some information off of your devices and into the cloud, or using encryption. In addition to the full report, EFF has also created a pocket guide for helping people concerned with data protection.

According to EFF Senior Staff Attorney Adam Schwartz, “The border is not a Constitution-free zone, but sometimes the rules are less protective of travelers and some border agents can be aggressive." Schwartz called for "clearer legal protections for everyone, but in the meantime, our report and pocket guides aim to put more power back into the hands of travelers.”

A federal court held in a recent ruling that foreign governments are free to spy on, injure, or even kill Americans in their own homes--so long as they do so by remote control.

The decision comes in a case about a U.S. citizen whose family home computer was attacked by malware that captured and then sent his every keystroke and Skype call to a server controlled by the Ethiopian government, likely in response to his political activity in favor of democratic reforms in Ethiopia.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the citizen had no legal remedy against Ethiopia for this attack, despite the fact that he was wiretapped at home in Maryland. The court held that, because the Ethiopian government hatched its plan in Ethiopia and its agents launched the attack that occurred in Maryland from outside the U.S., a law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act prevented U.S. courts from even hearing the case.

Under this decision, you have no recourse under law if a foreign government hacks into your car and drives it off the road, targets you for a drone strike, or even sends a virus to your pacemaker, as long as the government planned the attack on foreign soil.

If Congress moves ahead with plans to repeal the FCC's broadband privacy rules, your ISP will be able to do more and creepier things to you when you go online.

In addition to selling information about what you do and who you talk to online--which is already creepy enough--your ISP would also be able to hijack your searches so that you go directly to certain websites instead of seeing your search results. Your ISP would also be able to use new ways to track your every move online to place targeted ads in front of you. This could include injecting ads into your traffic based on your browsing history and injecting undetectable, undeletable tracking cookies in all of your HTTP traffic. It could also result in mobile carriers pre-installing software on your phone to track your Internet activity.

ISPs are telling Congress that this move won't really affect consumers, but we know that's not true. Congress repealing these privacy rules would leave Internet users with no protection at the federal level from the creepy things their ISPs want to do to them.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a disappointing ruling in a case over a patent on adult diapers that makes it easier for patent trolls to bring lawsuits long after the alleged infringement supposedly started. The 7-1 decision will allow trolls to sit around while others independently develop and build technology. The troll can then jump out from under the bridge and demand payment for work it had nothing to do with.

In honor of Sunshine Week earlier this month, EFF compiled the third-annual "Foilies," our anti-awards identifying the times when access to information has been stymied or when government agencies have responded in the most absurd ways to records requests. Highlights include current Vice President Mike Pence's use of a private AOL email account to conduct official business as Indiana governor, the Public Health Agency of Canada's use of tape and paper to redact information in documents sent to a journalists, and a local California police department's tactic of spreading fake news.

Domain seizure by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement is already a messy and imperfect system. Take, for example, the recent seizure of vicodin.com despite the fact that it belongs to the manufacturer and registered trademark holder for Vicodin. But domain seizure by private companies, a plan being pushed by Big Pharma and Big Content, will likely result in the number of mistaken domain seizure skyrocketing, and victims will likely have even less recourse than they have against a government seizure.

Adult social network FetLife has lost its ability to process credit card payments in the latest attempt from payment processors to censor sites when they dislike those sites' constitutionally protected speech. The ban appears to have come down from one of the credit card networks, which shut down both of the merchant accounts that FetLife used to process payments, justifying this to one merchant with complaints about "blood, needles, and vampirism" on the website, and to the other with the vague explanation of "illegal or immoral reasons".

Maryland is considering legislation that would keep public universities from selling or licensing their patents to patent assertion entities whose sole business model is threatening other innovators with patent lawsuits. The bill being considered in Maryland is modeled after draft legislation written as part of Reclaim Invention, a campaign from EFF and partner organizations to encourage universities across the country to commit to adopting patent policies that advance the public good.

Youth in California's juvenile detention and foster care programs should have secure and supervised access to the Internet. That's why EFF is supporting a new state bill to establish that youth in custody have a right to “reasonable access to computer technology and the Internet for the purposes of education and maintaining contact with family and supportive adults" and to establish the right of youth in foster care to have access to computers and the Internet.
miniLinks

Google and sister company Jigsaw are expanding their free cyber defense toolkit to civic groups and election organizers in the wake of recent high profile hacks, including the DNC's data breach during the 2016 election.

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
progress. -- Joseph JoubertAttachment 1008

The bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees apologized during a press conference this morning for failing to provide rigorous supervision of the intelligence community, blaming past years’ inaction on a fundamental misunderstanding of the word “oversight.” “It was merely a miscommunication,” House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said. “We had mixed up the word ‘oversee’ and the word ‘overlook.’ We thought we were supposed to overlook the mistakes of the intelligence community, not provide oversight.” Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr said, “We unequivocally condone the privacy invasions committed by U.S. intelligence agencies. Oh shoot, I mean condemn.”

European Union Commissioner for Justice Vera Jourova announced plans today to permanently protect Europeans’ data from U.S. government spying with the newest transnational data agreement: Privacy Wall. Once approved by the European Commission, the EU will begin constructing a thirty-foot wall around the United States. Only U.S. tech companies that comply with EU privacy restrictions and prohibit U.S. government access to their data will be given fiber optic grappling hooks to transport Europeans’ data across the Atlantic, over the wall, and back to their U.S.-based servers. U.S. lawmakers appeared unfazed by U.S. companies’ complaints that Privacy Wall will effectively kill their business abroad, but they responded to alarm bells raised by officials in the intelligence community who are concerned about losing generalized access to Europeans’ data.

The Academy Awards suffered an astounding embarrassment this week when presenters Alfonso Ribeiro and Mayim Bialik incorrectly handed out the Oscar for Best Film to the most-frequently torrent-ed movie of 2016, Deadpool, instead of the actual winner, Moonlight. Hollywood is blaming the mistake on accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is responsible for guarding the envelopes containing names of both Oscars winners and TorrentFreak’s list of most frequently torrent-ed films. Having been left off the list of Best Film nominees all together, Deadpool director Tim Miller and lead actor Ryan Reynolds were not in attendance at Sunday night’s Oscars, giving Kanye West time to take the stage and correct the mistake.

Frustrated by silence on conference calls, the FBI is asking Apple to provide a backdoor so that the agency can un-mute iPhones across the world without the iPhone users’ consent. “It’s incredibly frustrating when you’re waiting for someone to chime in on a conference call, and they’re still on mute,” FBI Director Jim Comey said at a press conference today. Comey appeared unmoved by arguments from technology and civil liberties advocates that creating a backdoor into all iPhones would undermine the privacy and security of tens of millions of technology users around the world. “Our work to protect this country’s national security is too important to wait the seconds it takes for our analysts to unlock and un-mute their phones,” Comey said. When asked if the FBI was seeking a similar accommodation from Android-developer Google, Comey at first laughed, but quickly sobered and asked “wait, people still use Android?”

EFF Releases Surveillance Self Defense for In-Person Meetings

EFF is out with an updated Surveillance Self Defense guide today that includes, for the first time, security tips for in-person meetings. Highlights include recommendations for verifying a person’s identity, evading facial recognition systems, and circumventing censorship. For instance, you should have anyone you meet print off their public PGP key on red paper, fold that paper into the shape of a flower, and pin that paper flower to their label. Additionally, the guide recommends drawing Kiss-style shapes on your face with eyeliner to protect yourself from facial recognition technology and constantly carrying around a bullhorn so you can shout louder than anyone trying to limit your free speech.

EFF Gives Posthumous Lifetime Achievement Pioneer Award to Perfect 10

EFF is awarding a 2017 Pioneer Award to recently-defunct men’s magazine and prodigious copyright-litigation-loser, Perfect 10. EFF established the Pioneer Awards in 1992 to recognize leaders on the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology. The awards celebrate those who have contributed substantially to the health, growth, accessibility, or freedom of computer-based communications. Perfect 10 is receiving a posthumous lifetime achievement Pioneer Award this year for its cutting-edge strategy of losing copyright lawsuits in order to advance the doctrine of fair use. After losing cases against Amazon, Google, CCBill, and Megaupload, Perfect 10 was finally liquidated in March of this year to satisfy a litigation debt to yet another victorious defendant, Giganews. We salute Perfect 10’s dozen-year campaign to help make the Internet more free by consistently losing in court. Bravo!

Intelligence Community Unveils Emotional Vulnerabilities Program

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats today revealed a new program by which the U.S. Intelligence Community will, when appropriate, disclose information about emotional vulnerabilities it discovers in the course of its national security work. Building off of the widely celebrated success of the vulnerabilities equities process (which still exists, we think?), U.S. intelligence agencies will begin sharing and sometimes publishing information about the personality quirks it discovers as it conducts surveillance of law-abiding Americans. “We hope to make the country more secure by letting people know that their roommate has arachnophobia, their brother is addicted to tanning beds, and their mother has a fear of being abandoned by her children,” said Coats after flinching away from a pigeon that wasn’t even flying toward the DNI.

Following the success of the Day Without a Woman general strike in March, the White House has thrown its support behind today’s Day without a Troll strike, during which all Internet trolls will disappear from comment sections and forums online.

Looking to increase its market share, nationwide reach, and overall reputation for evil, the Borg has announced that it is assimilating broadband giant Comcast. “This merger will benefit consumers and boost broadband competition, and the federal government should quickly approve it,” Comcast’s David Cohen said in a statement. “Plus, resistance is futile.”

White House Releases Diceware Passphrase List

In an attempt to demonstrate President Donald Trump’s tech savvy, the White House has released a list of suggested words to use when attempting to create a secure passphrase. "Our list has the best words," said White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. "Words like tremendous, disaster, MAGA, big-league, low-energy, beautiful, and winning. Sad!"

FBI Director Acknowledges Secure Backdoors Are Impossible

FBI Director Jim Comey said today that his agency, agreeing with technical experts, has officially concluded that it is impossible to create a backdoor into encrypted technologies without undermining users’ security. Nope, even that’s too ridiculous for an April Fool’s newsletter.

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progress. -- Joseph JoubertAttachment 1008